By Shannon Hicks

Most Newtown residents cannot think of Cherry Grove Farm without thinking of its current owner, Eleanor Mayer. Likewise, many cannot think of Mrs Mayer without thinking of the picturesque farm situated at the intersection of Platt's Hill Road, Hundred Acres, and Palestine Road.

The Mayer family has been working the land of Cherry Grove Farm for nearly a century. Generations of residents and visitors have grown up eating the fruits and vegetables that come from the soil of that farm, which measures nearly 150 acres. The old farmhouse and its familiar whitewashed barn proudly bearing the name of the farm in black hand-painted letters are a familiar landmark to passersby of all ages.

Now there is a new book that tells the story of that farm and the family that has lived at Cherry Grove since 1912, told from the point of one of its current residents. Written by Newtown resident Andrea Zimmermann, Eleanor Mayer's History of Cherry Grove Farm: Three Generations on a Connecticut Farm (ISBN 1-888006-18-8; Newtown Historical Society, design and printing at The Stinehour Press, Lunenburg, Vt., $20 hard cover, 87 pages) focuses on the farm and the three generations who have worked and cared for the land. Ms Zimmermann has written what she sees as a love story of Eleanor Mayer's love for and good stewardship of the land.

"Herein is a love story of sorts," she wrote in the book's Preface. "Eleanor would probably cringe at that line, but her feelings towards the land are what makes for all good and enduring relationships: she has invested herself completely with full physical effort, financial commitment, and the unwavering hope that despite storms and droughts all will turn out well."

Ms Zimmermann will host a book signing and reception at C.H. Booth Library on Tuesday, August 23. She will be in the library's meeting room from 7 to 9 pm. Light refreshments will be served.

Copies of the book are $20, with all money from sales going into Newtown Historical Society's Eleanor Mayer Fund. The book is being sold at C.H. Booth Library, Newtown General Store, and The Little Green Barn.

Newtown Historical Society was given a foundation grant to help with the publishing costs of the book. The Mayer Fund was then established to continue preserving and publishing local histories of Newtown including Newtown Remembered: an oral history of the 20th century as well as the printing of another in the growing collection of books about Newtown by local authors.

While Eleanor Mayer's History of Cherry Grove Farm focuses on the farm and the Mayer family, Ms Zimmermann says there is also a universality in the story.

"It is a portrait of agriculture, with background on how farming has changed. It is a reminder that we need people like Eleanor Mayer who will find ways to maintain agricultural resources and beautiful open space at a time when farmlands are diminishing," Ms Zimmermann said last week.

The book project started when Ms Zimmermann was approached by a foundation looking to continue its own project of preserving agricultural history, exploring the connection of man to land, and maintaining the public about the importance of maintaining open space.

A former reporter for The Newtown Bee, Ms Zimmermann had, during the mid-1990s, created an award-winning series about farming in Newtown. At that time she met and interviewed George Mayer, III, Eleanor's brother.

Ms Zimmermann had her first opportunity to sit down with Eleanor when she worked, with fellow residents Dan Cruson and Mary Maki, on the oral history project that was eventually published in book form by Newtown Historical Society in 2002.

"I learned about her 40-year career in banking, her real estate endeavors, and early employment at Hawley Manor. Oh, but to see her eyes light up when she talked about the farm," Ms Zimmermann wrote in History of Cherry Grove Farm.

Cherry Grove Farm has been in the Mayer family since 1912.

The family had moved into Newtown in 1891. Madeline (Wurtzel) and George Mayer — Eleanor's grandparents — were married in March 1891, and began renting a farm on Eden Hill Road that year.

George Mayer Jr (Eleanor's father) was born in the Eden Hill house on December 23, 1892. The family moved to a house with 19 acres on Aunt Park Lane in April 1893.

In the 1890s, Ms Mayer says early on in History of Cherry Grove Farm, "there were a lot of farms in Newtown back then." The Beers family alone had at least 1,000 acres between them, she said, with each farm measuring between 150 and 200 acres.

George Jr purchased a farm in the Palestine district, where he had been hired as an overseer, from the Beers family on April 1, 1912. So Cherry Grove Farm (so named because of a large cherry grove within its property lines, Ms Mayer explains elsewhere in the book) has had, Ms Mayer likes to point out, only two owners since the days of the Indians.

The current farmhouse on the property, built in 1825, "is not that old," says Ms Mayer. Oldest brother Jerome was born in that house in 1923, older brother George came into the family in 1927 (and passed away in 2000), and Eleanor was born in 1930. That farmhouse is the only home George III and Eleanor have known.

"Most of the farms today are being sold off little bit little," said Ms Mayer at the beginning of Chapter 2, The Farming Life. "We're the only ones that have not sold an inch, and I have bought up a lot more land and added it to our farm. Cherry Grove Farm was 144 acres when we came here. It ran from the end of Steck Drive, both sides of Hundred Acres Road up to West Farm Ridge, and both sides down Platts Hill and Beaver Dam."

At the turn of the 20th Century, farms such as Cherry Grove Farm with 140 acres or more, were commonplace in Newtown. Today, Ms Zimmermann has learned (through research with USDA Marketing Services Branch), farms in Fairfield County District 4 average 47 acres. The average for the state of Connecticut is 97 acres.

The farm is still fully functional today. Ms Mayer still does "a lot of produce; more produce than anybody in the town — five fields in produce," she says in a later chapter. Visitors to the farm's stand can expect this year to see quite a variety of vegetables including leek ("probably our biggest seller," says Ms Mayer), Italian tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes ("the standard ones, and long ones for pasta — we plant 500 to 600 tomato plants"), white eggplant, long eggplant and regular eggplant, red okra and green okra, peppers, purple beans ("when you steam them, they turn the greenest green you ever saw"), herbs, gourds and pumpkins.

The pumpkins — like most things on a farm — benefit not only those who grow, consume, and/or sell them but also something else on the farm: bees. A local beekeeper has a number of beehives at the farm, and the bees pollinate the pumpkin's flowers — all 18 acres of them.

Ms Mayer also has a few beef cattle and a pair of horses.

"A century ago Newtown was an agrarian community, but now the old-time farmers are disappearing like butterflies after a frost," Ms Zimmermann wrote in the book's Introduction.

In putting the book together Ms Zimmermann conducted multiple interviews with Ms Mayer. She then presented Ms Mayer's story using Eleanor Mayer's own words, adding facts and other information about farming to open each of the book's ten chapters. The information covers Newtown specifically and the country as a whole, offering broader views and context to the way farming affected the family and the town.

"It's amazing how much has changed since the Mayers bought Cherry Grove Farm in 1912. The advent of the tractor and other forms of mechanization greatly facilitated farming and reduced the need for farm labor," Ms Zimmermann said. "Eleanor discusses the arrival of the potato bug and other such nemeses that continue to plague farmers today, and the reintroduction of wildlife, such as wild turkey, the nemesis of a blueberry grower.

"She also talks about the Danbury Fair, education at the one-room school houses on her property, farm labor, and the incredible variety of crops grown right here in Newtown by her family — everything from tobacco, a very profitable crop 100 years ago, to cranberries.

"This is Eleanor's story in her own words, culled, edited and arranged by me," said Ms Zimmermann. "I added the Preface and Introduction to explain my relationship with Eleanor and to provide a description of her. I think they really add dimension to the overall piece. And it was fun to write the Intro and the Preface because these are in my voice.

"Eleanor Mayer is the quintessential Yankee farmer — astute, understated, resourceful, with a wonderful dry sense of humor," Ms Zimmermann added. "I really enjoyed our conversations."

Chapters concern the Mayer family settlement in Newtown, the farming life, farmhands (which was the only help the Mayers ever hired; the housework was all taken care of by the family), and the Mayer children's education. Ms Mayer owns and maintains both of the Palestine District one-room schoolhouses. When Hawley School first opened there were no girls in the Vocational Agriculture class, until Ms Mayer put up a stink and eventually became — along with Jeanette Lewis and Audrey Kalmbacher — one of the first girls to take VoAg in Newtown.

Later chapters also concern working the land, its crops, pesticides and composting, The Great Danbury Fair, challenges, and the farm today.

Ms Mayer believes, wrote Ms Zimmermann, "in using the most natural means possible for growing vegetables and raising livestock. But her farm is not 'certified organic.' It may qualify to be so designated, but Eleanor has never felt it necessary to attach that label to her farm produce. What is stocked at the farmstand is sold below cost; Eleanor simply wants people to buy and enjoy what she harvests from her land."

The Mayer family provided half of the photographs used in the book. Ms Zimmermann, who has always enjoyed photography, also took the cover shot and the recent photographs of Eleanor Mayer and the farm animals.

"I love the one of the cows because they have spied Eleanor, who was standing next to me as I took this shot, and they are trucking over to greet her!" she said, laughing. "It was really remarkable to see how the animals respond to her."

The book includes an extensive Index.

"I've learned, working at the library and using local history resources, how important it is to have an Index," said Ms Zimmermann. "If you want to find out about quinces or harvesting ice in Newtown, it's a subject in the Index."

While she admits that some may find the length of the Index daunting, it does add value to the book. Having a 75-year old lifelong resident talk about everything from familiar family names — truly an A to Z source, from the Amarals to the Zymbaluks — and different crops her family has harvested to Christmas time and being the only student in her first grade class is a reference source in itself. Being able to locate the subjects this resident spoke about within the covers of a book makes the Index invaluable.

It's no surprise that a book dedicated to farming and family is the subject of Ms Zimmermann's first book. Nature and writing have always been two big interests of Ms Zimmermann, and she was able to bring both of these loves into her Cherry Grove Farm project.

"I've been writing since I was really young," said Ms Zimmermann. "I remember at 13 I was sending off short stories to The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and other big-name publications — all to come back, of course, with a civilized form rejection slip! But it never deterred me.

"My parents always encouraged me to pursue anything I had an interest in, especially anything creative. My mother was an artist and author and my father was a serious amateur photographer," she shared.

In addition to editing the print version of Newtown Remembered, Ms Zimmermann continues to work on gathering oral histories for Newtown Historical Society's Oral History Project.

She was also editor for The Remarkable Huntingtons: Chronicle of a Marriage, by Mary Mitchell and Albert Goodrich, published in 2004.

She has written and received grants for C.H. Booth Library's Young Adult Creative Writing Camp (2004), Newtown Historical Images Archive (2003) and the Newtown Oral History Project (1998). The Historical Images Archive had its public debut just last month. A collection of images from the collection were printed and put on exhibit in the lower meeting room at the library. That collection, "Passport To Newtown's Past," remains on view until August 31.

It took a few years, but Ms Zimmermann's work has also been appearing in magazines including Connecticut Magazine, Yankee, Appalachian Trailway News, Twist, Spotlight Magazine, Business Digest and Greenwich Magazine. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times Connecticut section, and she was a features writer for The Newtown Bee from July 1993 to July 1997.

During her tenure at The Bee, Ms Zimmermann was also presented with three writing awards, including Connecticut Agricultural Journalism Award for best series in a weekly publication in 1996. In 1997 she was presented with a Gail Smith Award and Connecticut Youth Services Association Media Advocate Award, both for her coverage of and work with youth in the community.

She holds a master's of library and information sciences from the University of Pittsburgh, a master's in English from SUNY/Binghamton, and a bachelor's in social work from Sacred Heart University.

The chapters in Eleanor Mayer's History of Cherry Grove Farm are loaded with information and charming anecdotes. The entire book is indeed a love story to farming, and of a way of life that is sadly disappearing.